Out of the Darkness d-6

by Harry Turtledove

  All three Kaunians from Forthweg chuckled. “We’d sooner just get down to business, sir, if you don’t mind,” Nemunas said.

  Hajjaj allowed himself a small smile. The blonds had learned how some Zuwayzi customs worked, sure enough. “As you wish,” he said, and waved to the pillows piled here and there on the carpeted floor. “Sit down. Make yourselves comfortable. And then, please, tell me what I can do for you.”

  His guests had got used to making do with pillows instead of chairs and couches, too. They all made nests for themselves. Nemunas, who seemed to be their spokesman, said, “Sir, you know we’ve been sailing east out of Najran back to Forthweg, to hit the cursed redheads a lick or two.”

  “Officially, I do not know this,” Hajjaj replied. “Had I known it officially”- he wondered if he’d correctly used the subjunctive there-”Zuwayza’s former allies, the Algarvians you mentioned, would not have been pleased with me.”

  Kaudavas said, “We never did understand how anyone could ally with Mezentio’s whoresons, if you don’t mind my saying so.” He was stamped from the same mold as his comrades; if anything, he was bigger and burlier than either of them, burly enough to make Hajjaj wonder if he had a little Forthwegian blood.

  “Considering what the Algarvians did to you, I know why you say that,” Hajjaj replied. “Still, we had our reasons.”

  “Now we’ve had something to do with the Unkerlanter navy men at Najran,” Vitols said. “Maybe we can figure out what some of those reasons are.”

  “Ah?” Hajjaj leaned forward. “Dealing with Unkerlanters is often less than enjoyable. Does this have to do with your reasons for coming to Bishah to see me?”

  “Aye,” the Kaunians said as one, loudly and angrily enough to make Qutuz look in to see that the foreign minister was all right. Hajjaj waved him back. Nemunas went on, “The thing of it is, we want to keep right on sailing back to Forthweg. Swemmel’s men haven’t driven the redheads out of all of it yet. We can do some good there.”

  “And besides, we want revenge,” Kaudavas added.

  “Indeed,” Hajjaj said. “Rest assured, I do understand this.” Among the Zuwayzin, vengeance was a dish to be savored. No other Derlavaian folk thought of it in such artistic terms, though the Algarvians came close.

  Vitols said, “But the Unkerlanter navy men won’t let us go out. They say they’ll sink us if we try, and they mean it, curse ‘em.”

  “Can you do something about that, sir?” Nemunas asked. “That’s why we came here, to find out if you could.”

  “I … see. I do not know.” Hajjaj made a sour face. Najran was a Zuwayzi port, not one that belonged to King Swemmel. For the Zuwayzin not to be in full control of what happened there was galling. But Zuwayza, these days, kept only such sovereignty as Unkerlant chose to yield to her. Hajjaj drummed his fingers on his knee. “Let me ask a question. Are you loyal to this new king, this King Beornwulf, the Unkerlanters have named?” Forthweg, these days, kept even less sovereignty than Zuwayza did.

  In almost perfect unison, the Kaunians from Forthweg shrugged. “Don’t care about him one way or the other,” Nemunas answered.

  “He’s just a Forthwegian,” Vitols agreed.

  This time, Hajjaj hid his smile. The blonds might be a persecuted minority, but they kept a haughty pride of their own. He said, “Let me ask it a different way: would you swear loyalty to King Beornwulf if that let you be loosed against the Algarvians still in Forthweg?”

  Nemunas, Vitols, and Kaudavas looked at one another. They all shrugged again, more raggedly than before. “Why not?” Nemunas said at last. “When the war’s finally over, we’ll be living under him if we go back to Forthweg.”

  “He can’t be much worse than that vain fool of a Penda,” Kaudavas added.

  His opinion of the former King of Forthweg closely matched Hajjaj’s. The foreign minister also noted that some Kaunian refugees looked to be thinking about staying in Zuwayza. After the Six Years’ War, the kingdom had taken in some Algarvian refugees. The blonds might also fit in.

  None of that, though, had anything to do with the business at hand. “I shall speak to Minister Ansovald for you,” Hajjaj promised. “I do not know what he will say, but I shall speak to him.” The blonds were effusive in their thanks. They bowed themselves almost double as they left Hajjaj’s office. No matter how much gratitude they showed, though, they had no idea of the size of the favor Hajjaj was doing for them.

  Qutuz did. “I’m sorry, your Excellency,” he said.

  “So am I,” Hajjaj answered bleakly. “Some things can’t be helped, though.” But he couldn’t stay that calm, however much he tried. “Every time I talk to the Unkerlanter barbarian, I want to go take a bath right afterwards. And he has the whip hand now, powers below eat him.”

  Ansovald didn’t deign to grant him an audience for three days. The Unkerlanter minister no doubt thought he was humiliating and angering Hajjaj. Hajjaj, however, was just as well pleased with delay here. At last, though, he had to don an Unkerlanter-style tunic and travel over to the ministry. He alighted from his carriage with a sigh. The Unkerlanter sentries looked through him as if he didn’t exist.

  By all the signs, Ansovald would also have loved to pretend Hajjaj didn’t exist. He and the Zuwayzi foreign minister had never got on well. These days, Ansovald-a tough, beefy man with a permanent sour expression-not only had the whip hand, he enjoyed using it. “Well, what now?” he demanded in Algarvian when Hajjaj came before him.

  “I have a petition to present to you,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister replied, also in Algarvian. It was the only language they shared. Using it with the Unkerlanter had an ironic tang that usually appealed to Hajjaj. Today, though, he wondered at the omen.

  “Go ahead,” Ansovald rumbled, and fiddled with a fingernail as if more interested in that than in anything Hajjaj was likely to say. No doubt he is, Hajjaj thought unhappily. Nevertheless, he went on with the request the Kaunians from Forthweg had made. Ansovald did start to listen to him; he gave the Unkerlanter minister to Zuwayza that much. And, when he finished, Ansovald wasted no time coming to a decision. He looked Hajjaj straight in the eye and said, “No.”

  Hajjaj hadn’t really expected anything else. Ansovald was here not least to thwart Zuwayza. But he asked, “Why not, your Excellency? Surely you cannot believe these Kaunians would prefer King Mezentio to King Swemmel? Why not loose them against the enemy you both hate?”

  “I don’t have to tell you a cursed thing,” Ansovald answered. Hajjaj just inclined his head and waited. Ansovald glared at him. At last, patience won what anger-or anger openly revealed, at least-wouldn’t have. “All right. All right,” the Unkerlanter minister said. “I’ll tell you why, curse it.”

  “Thank you,” Hajjaj said, and wondered whether he was more pained to say those words or Ansovald to hear them.

  Ansovald might have bitten into a lemon as he went on, “Because these Kaunians are a pack of cursed troublemakers, that’s why.”

  “Don’t you want Mezentio’s men to have trouble?” Hajjaj asked.

  “They’ve got trouble. We’re giving it to them.” Ansovald’s glare settled on the Zuwayzi foreign minister. “If we weren’t, I wouldn’t be here yattering with you, would I?” Hajjaj spread his hands, yielding the point. Ansovald bulled ahead: “But that isn’t the kind of troublemakers I meant. Aye, they’d give the redheads a hard time, as long as there are any redheads left in Forthweg. There won’t be, though, not for very much longer. And after that-troublemakers make trouble, you know what I mean? Pretty soon, they’d start giving us trouble, just on account of we were there. Why let ‘em? You’ve got yourself some blonds, and you’re welcome to them. My orders on this one come from Cottbus, and Cottbus knows what it’s talking about.”

  Hajjaj considered. Ansovald’s words did have a certain ruthless logic behind them-the sort King Swemmel came up with on one of his good days. Troublemakers were fond of making trouble, and against whom didn’t always matter. Hajjaj had tol
d the blonds he would try, and he’d tried. “Let it be as you say,” he murmured.

  “Of course it’ll be as I say,” Ansovald answered smugly. He thrust a thick finger out at Hajjaj. “Now, as long as you’re here-when are you going to give this Tassi bitch back to Iskakis?”

  “Good day, your Excellency,” Hajjaj said with dignity, and rose to leave. “You may have a good deal to say about what goes on in my kingdom, but not, powers above be praised, in my household.” But as he walked away, he hoped that wasn’t more wishful thinking.

  With nothing to do but lie on his back and eat and drink, Bembo should have been a happy man. The constable had often aspired to such laziness as an ideal, though a friendly woman or two had also played a part in his daydreams. A broken leg most emphatically had not.

  It got me back to Tricarico, he thought. Oraste was right-if I’d stayed in Eoforwic, if I’d stayed anywhere in fornicating Forthweg, I’d probably be dead now. None of the news coming out of the west was good, even if the local news sheets did try to make it as palatable as they could.

  What Oraste hadn’t thought about was that, even back in his own home town in northeastern Algarve, Bembo still might get killed. Kuusaman and Lagoan dragons flew over the Bradano Mountains every night-and sometimes during the day-to drop their eggs on Tricarico. Bembo wondered how long it would be before enemy soldiers started coming over the mountains, too.

  “However long it is, I can’t do anything about it,” he muttered. His leg remained splinted. It still hurt. It also itched maddeningly under the boards and bandages where he couldn’t scratch.

  A nurse came down the neat row of cots in the ward. The sanatorium was crowded, not just with men wounded in combat but with all the civilians hurt by falling eggs. Bembo had hoped to be something of a hero when he got back to Tricarico. Hardly anyone seemed to care, or even to notice.

  “How are we today?” the nurse asked when she got to his cot.

  “I’m fine.” Bembo whipped his head around, as if to see if he were sharing the bed with other men he didn’t know about. “Don’t see anyone else, though.”

  He got a dutiful smile from the nurse. She looked tired. Everyone in Tricarico, or at least in the sanatorium, looked beat these days. She set a hand on his forehead. “No fever,” she said, and scribbled something on the leaf of paper in her clipboard. “That’s a good sign.”

  “How are you, sweetheart?” Bembo asked. He felt good enough to notice she was a woman, and not the homeliest one he’d ever seen.

  She was pretty, in fact, when she smiled, which she did now-this one had nothing of duty in it. But her brightening had nothing to do with Bembo’s charms, if any. “I got a letter from my husband last night,” she answered. “He’s in the west, but he’s still all right, powers above be praised.”

  “Good,” Bembo said, more or less sincerely. “Glad to hear it.”

  “Do you need to use the bedpan?” she asked.

  “Well. . aye,” he said, and she tended to it, holding up the blanket on the cot as a minimal shield for his modesty. She handled him with efficiency King Swemmel might have envied, as if his piece of meat were nothing but a piece of meat. He sighed. You heard stories about nurses. … If he’d learned one thing as a constable, it was that you heard all sorts of stories that weren’t true.

  “Anything else?” she asked. Bembo shook his head. She went on to the fellow in the next cot.

  One of the stories you heard was how bad sanatorium food was. That one, unfortunately, had turned out to be true. If anything, it had turned out to be an understatement. What Bembo got for supper was barley porridge and olives that had seen better days and wine well on the way to turning into vinegar. He didn’t get much, either: certainly not enough wine to make him happy.

  The fellow in the cot next to his was a civilian who’d got his leg broken here in Tricarico at about the same time as Bembo had over in Eoforwic. His name was Tibiano. By the way he talked, Bembo suspected he’d seen the inside of a constabulary station or two in his time. “I’ll lay you three to two the fornicating islanders send dragons over again tonight,” he said now.

  “I wouldn’t mind getting laid, but not by you, thanks,” Bembo answered. Tibiano chuckled. Bembo went on, “I won’t touch the bet, either. Those whoresons come over just about every night.”

  “Isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” Tibiano agreed. “Who would’ve thunk it? We started this war to kick everybody else’s arse, not to get ours kicked. Those other bastards deserve it. What did we ever do to anybody?”

  Having been in Forthweg, Bembo knew just what-or some of just what- his kingdom had done. He hadn’t talked much about that since returning to Tricarico. For one thing, he hadn’t thought anybody would believe him. For another, he would just as soon have forgotten. But he couldn’t leave that unanswered. “There are some Kaunians who’d say we’ve done a thing or two to them.” And there would be a lot more, if they were still alive.

  “Blonds? Futter blonds,” Tibiano said. “They’ve always tried to keep us Algarvians from being everything we ought to be. They’re jealous, that’s what they are. Like I say, they deserve it.”

  He spoke loudly and passionately, as people do when sure they’re right. Several other men in the ward lifted their heads and agreed with him. So did the young woman who was taking away their supper tins. No one had a good word to say about any Kaunians. Bembo didn’t argue. He didn’t love the blonds, either. And the last thing he wanted was for anyone to say he did. Calling an Algarvian a Kaunian-lover had always been good for starting a fight. These days, though, calling him a Kaunian-lover was about the same as calling him a traitor.

  Night came early, though not so early as it did farther south. Trapani endured hours more darkness each winter night than Tricarico did, and suffered because of it. But what Tricarico went through wasn’t easy, either.

  Bembo had just dropped into a fitful, uncomfortable sleep-he would have killed to be able to roll over onto his belly-when alarm bells started clanging. “Come on!” he shouted. “We’re all supposed to run down to the cellar.”

  Curses and jeers answered him. Hardly any of the men in this ward could get out of their cots, let alone run. If an egg burst on the sanatorium, then it did, and that was all there was to it. Bembo cursed the bells. He’d heard them too often in Eoforwic. And the last time you heard them there, you didn’t get to a shelter, or even a hole in the ground, fast enough.

  In the dark ward, somebody asked, “Where are all the fancy spells the news sheets keep promising?”

  “Up King Mezentio’s arse,” somebody else answered. Bembo probably wasn’t the only one trying to figure out who’d said that. But the dark could cover all sorts of treason. At least for now, the disgruntled Algarvian had got away with speaking his mind.

  Eggs didn’t start falling right away. Algarvian dowsers were good at what they did. They’d probably picked up the enemy dragons’ motion as soon as the beasts came over the Bradano Mountains. But how much good would that do without enough Algarvian dragons to go up there and knock the Kuusamans and Lagoans out of the sky? Not much, Bembo thought dismally.

  As soon as eggs did begin to drop, beams from heavy sticks started probing up into the sky. But the air pirates had plenty of tricks. Along with eggs, they dropped fluttering strips of paper that drove dowsers mad: how to detect the motion of dragons when all that other motion distracted them? Because they couldn’t tell the men at the heavy sticks exactly where the enemy dragons were, the beams from those sticks struck home only by luck.

  And if an egg lands right on top of this stinking sanatorium, that’ll be luck, too, Bembo thought-bloody bad luck. No one was supposed to try to drop eggs on buildings where healers worked, but accidents, mistakes, misfortunes happened.

  When an egg burst close enough to rattle the shutters over the windows, someone in a ward down the hall started screaming. His shrill cries went on and on, then stopped very abruptly. Bembo didn’t care to think about what had p
robably just gone on in that other ward.

  Eggs kept falling through most of the night. Bembo got a little fitful sleep, but not much. The same, no doubt, would be true for everybody in Tricarico. Even people who weren’t hurt wouldn’t be worth much in the morning. Could metalworkers make proper shells for eggs when they had to pry their eyelids open? Could mages cast the proper spells to contain the sorcerous energy in those eggs? You didn’t have to be Swemmel of Unkerlant to see how efficiency would go down.

  “One more night,” Tibiano said when the sun crawled up over the mountains to the east.

  “Aye, one more night,” Bembo agreed in tones as hollow as his wardmate’s. He yawned till his jaw creaked. A serving woman brought a cart full of trays into the room. The yawn turned into a groan. “Now we have to live through one more breakfast.”

  After breakfast, a healer who looked even more exhausted than Bembo felt came thought the ward. He poked at Bembo’s leg, muttered a quick charm or two, and nodded. “You’ll do,” he said, before racing on to Tibiano’s cot. How many men’s recoveries was he overseeing? Could he do any of them justice?

  Bembo was dozing-if he couldn’t sleep at night, he’d do it in the daytime- when a nurse said, “You’ve got a visitor.”

  He opened his eyes. He hadn’t had many visitors since getting hurt, and this one.. “Saffa!” he exclaimed.

  “Hello, Bembo,” the sketch artist said. “I thought I’d come by and see how you were.” She didn’t look good herself-not the way Bembo remembered her. She was pale and sallow and seemed weary unto death.

  “I heard you had a baby,” Bembo said. Only after he’d spoken did he stop and think that might be part of why she looked so tired.

  “Aye, a little boy,” she answered. “My sister is taking care of him right now.”

  “Wouldn’t give me a tumble,” he complained. Self-pity and self-aggrandizement were never far from the surface with him. “Who is the papa, anyway?”